The term "conspicuous consumption" was coined by the American sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen in 1899. Veblen pointed to the irrational desire of affluent societies to purchase commodities whose cost exceeds their worth, in order to showcase high economic status and quality of life. Products and commodities have changed significantly since Veblen's time, as their role has shifted increasingly from the satisfaction of actual needs to the satisfaction of desires. Whereas products or services can fulfill needs, desire produces lust, and needs are invented alongside a thirst for more and more objects. As the contemporary philosopher Slavoj Zizek argues, "Desire's raison d'etre is not to realize its goal, to find full satisfaction, but to reproduce itself as desire."

The art of the 20th century introduced everyday objects into themuseum. Urinals, tinned food cans, and cardboard boxes have come to be presented as artworks, thus undermining conventional art-world codes. Such decontextualized objects invite the viewers to engage in a new andcritical reading of the consumption of commodities and culture.

In the exhibition Wheat Is Wheat Is Wheat, the designer Peddy Mergui exhibits basic everyday products such as flour, sugar and salt in the museum, presenting them as glorified commodities branded by luxury brands such as Gucci, Prada and Nike, among others. Mergui uses the skills, talents and toolsof a branding and advertising expert; like a seductive magician, he disrupts the appearance and function of familiar, everyday products and lends thema sublime and desirable aura. On the one hand, Mergui chooses the most basic food products - ones that satisfy elementary human needs, and which areusually subsidized by the state so that even the lowest socioeconomic classes can purchase them. On the other hand, he employs craft skills and a scrutinizing gaze in order to camouflage these products as luxury brands. Their packaging, which lures us with promises of wealth, quality of life, beauty, youth, and success, could equally be filled with air, straw, or sand. The physical and material value of the product has nothing to do with its symbolic value, which appeals to unconscious desires.

Gertrude Stein's famous phrase "A rose is a rose is a rose" reveals things tobe nothing more than what they are. Similarly, in Wheat Is Wheat Is Wheat, Mergui exposes us to the big lie of ostentatious purchases: flour branded by Prada is nothing more than flour. In doing so, he confronts us with ourparticipation in the culture of conspicuous consumption.Peddy Mergui is an Israeli designer and the owner of the branding agency "Talking Brands." He has served as head of the department of Visual Communications Design at the Holon Institute of Technology, where he is currently a lecturer and senior faculty member.